Collected Poems (7 page)

Sleep of the coolèd lids and breath of flowers,

O sleep of youth, dew-sandaled from the leas,

Throated with music of ensilvered showers

And silken winds that flash against the trees;

O summer sleep of passionate innocence,

Clean as the morning stars of doubt and pain,

If dreamful, not, oh, not at the expense

Of tears, but fresh with news from fancy’s Spain —

Revisit with thy trancèd healing sweet

These eyes that have forgot almost thy spell,

Sail back with all thy joyous-freighted fleet

Down the long azure of my spirit’s swell.

And for thy traffic with that brooding stream

Bring back the purple to my hills of dream.

Immortal boy! whose years scarce reached my own,

And yet were filled with all the kinless grief

Devolving on old age, without relief

Of stagnant brain, of nerveless blood and bone —

At dusk, when wind-swept autumn woods are lone,

I, who of Fortune’s bounty am the thief,

Gold-filled, I muse upon thy life, so brief,

So passionate, and, envying thee, I moan.

For dreaming thus, there comes a specter thought

Which fastens on my soul and leaves it grey

With fear. If Death, who found thy field so fraught

With golden harvest, now to me should say

“Enough, ’tis Autumn” — God! no harvest yet

Have I, and still my fields are green and wet.

And Proserpine, still fragrant of the air

And upper brightness, bore him children — him

Whose heart, not knowing Sicily, was bare

Of songs, whose sunless mouth was dumb. That grim

Illimitable cold was alien

Always; and always, hopeful of the song

Of birds, she leaned and thought to find again

Those blooms that watch the tearless stars so long

They weep. When to her kingdom came the dead,

Still glistening with tears and asphodel,

Forgetting all save home, their eyes she read,

Wherein the sweet, far earth seemed yet to dwell.

.   .   .   .   .

Behold, the blue South in our hearts like wine —

But Pluto’s mouth, O Mother Proserpine!

When naked winter on the midnight falls

With icy macerations, hook and flail,

They come — with rush of wings and signal calls —

The mighty birds that home the north, full sail

Upon the blast. Their unseen cohorts high,

Breasting the stars, make purpose proud to shun

All pausing, till beneath them, tranquil, lie

Day and the silver marshes of the sun.

But should the floor of darkness festal grow,

As far beneath some town unbraids its lights,

Routed, deceived, heart-set to gain the glow,

They drop; nor join again the sunward flights.

Was it their cries I heard, remote, withdrawn,

Or spirit choirs dark-flying towards some dawn?

For them that on the mountain fight beneath

The visioned ensigns of the unknown God,

Tho’ battle-anguish be their only wreath,

Failure their palm, their victory the sod —

I have no tears. Compassion not that band,

Patriots, poets, dreamers, men of prayer,

The common reachers after right. The hand

Impelling them thus blindly to lay bare

Their hearts to that unequal contest, grants

Solace divine for their divine attempt.

For them that know not strife, nor hear the chants

Precedent to the bloody end’s contempt —

For them unloose your tears! Their life is sleep,

Unvigilant, unwounded; they but sheep!

Not for more hours of bliss I make demand,

O life! So many thou hast flung with hand

Of summer. Grant instead for winter’s hem

Of sunshine, certain memory of them.

As well house up the homeless Bedouin stars

And tent them permanent on the night’s great desert,

As thy steep thoughts to circumscribe and fix

With human tears or home or human love; —

Thou nomad of God’s universal night!

               Pause we within the sunset, love;

Rare is such time — so lovely and so passionless —

And sweeter far than when the proud, gold morning

Withers the dew with scorn and in his youth.

                         Pause here and let me speak

               As lover never spoke to one he loved.

How clear the west, unpinionable, and all gold,

As tho’ to cleanse us for the coming of the stars!

               Now even we are worthy of the truth; —

                         I, to lay bare, and thou, to hear.

But yet, the words may stab; nor am I brave —

               So, pr’ythee, turn from me thine eyes,

    Nor let me see thy perilous, curved mouth,

Crimson as flame, and cold as blooms at dawn.

                         So. (My words seem shackled —

                         Sluggish with frosty truth).…

               That moment long ago when thee I saw,

And straight the whole world ‘came invisible,

               That time of passionate oblivion,

    Once seemed to me the incarnation time

    Of love, the heaven-sent, the Paraclete!

               Thus have I told thee; thus believed.

                         But, ignorant, I lied.

               No spirit of the Lord anointed paused

Within the portals of my heart on hallowed feet.

               Not that, but some young god,

With blown, bright hair and fillet golden, came,

And, stretching forth the blossoming rod of beauty,

                         Upon me wrought a pagan spell.

               Not love, not love, — nor then, nor now!

If Christ should halt beside this spot to touch my hand,

    It would not be to claim my soul as friend;

But I should hear the sound of fearful things

                                        That rush into the sea.

    This fierce obsession of my waking hours,

    This visioning that makes night ecstasy,

    It is not love. And this the proof. —

Ah, heart’s desire, should thy strong beauty fail

               As fails the beauty of the fields,

    Or foam blown where the seas are beachless,

    To me long, sweet forgetfulness would come,

And summer’s ease, once known, now long ago.

    Thy words are music rich within mine ear,

But yet, I listen not if there be meaning in them.

                         Thine eyes, like winter seas,

Dim grey, with thought of green and fear of blue,

    Thy listening eyes, immeasurably still —

    Oh, are they still with dreams, and sleep

    Deeper than waking? Or with the drowse

Of inner lassitude and sheer vacuity of soul?

                                        I dare not guess,

    But, careless, drink their cool, Circean sorcery.

    Hast thou a heart? I cannot say;

For, where it may not be I once did watch

A thought surge, flaming all thy wintry white

                                        To blossoming spring.

    
Mayhap, thy soul twines deep with God’s.

                                        Mayhap … I know

Thy body’s whiteness and old Grecian grace …

As to one seeking glimpse of the huge sea,

    Might come as hindrance on the slopes

                                        An almond tree,

Leaning in ecstasy of petalled beauty, so

Betwixt thy soul and mine riseth alway

                         This barrier — thy loveliness!

    Where leads my way?

By trees that flutter in the wind,

    By fields half blind

With dew, by halls where I may find

    At afterday,

    Heathen or fay.

    I pass and sing.

With cool-eyed youth and all delight

    I am bedight —

From morning light to morning light

    Adventuring.

One song I sing.

    Beneath the blue,

The lithe trees lean my song to hear.

    It is so clear

Even their blytheness it can cheer —

    For fresh and true,

    ’Tis all of you!

                                        The rain has come.

                         Gone the empurpled air

Which hung upon the golden wreckage of the trees.

                                        The rain has come,

                         And one no longer sees

The sun. The radiance that lay upon the vair

And crimson of the earth is vanishèd with these.

                                        The wind is up.

                         It greits; nor dazzles now

The quiet lanes with ruined autumn’s gorgeousness.

                                        The wind is up,

                         But tho’ the boughs confess

Its potency, of jeweled tribute they allow

No leaf. The earth, Danaë once, is treasureless.

                                        Winter is come —

                         The night-cursed, fearful days,

Stainèd and blurred with tears and querulous with pain.

                                        Winter is come,

                         And if my heart refrain

Most bitterly from backward looks when pitying stays

The sun, then, God! what agony these days of rain!

The nightingale has a golden heart,

    And a silver heart the wren;

But, oh, for me the bold, bright bird

    That sings with the heart of men!

His music is not of seas forlorn,

    His magic is not of tears;

From tilted throat his raptures float

    And tumble in laughter and jeers.

He does not cease when daylight dies,

    But he sings right on to the dark;

The stars or moon may die or swoon,

    In the drip of the rain — O hark!

He does not cease when spring is done,

    And his mate with love is fled;

A fairer thing than love or spring

    Is life. And the fall is red.

Sing, nightingales and silver wrens

    And fairy throats that can;

But the bird I love is the darling bird

    With the free, proud heart of a man.

Still burning, let me cast the cup of youth aside,

    Or else, with one deep, purple draught,

Crush it and toss its unregretted pieces wide

To windwards, and the latter days abide.

What if the spicery of summer be forspent,

    And night’s own argent madness gone?

The shining Bacchanal of youth was always rent

By cries the circling dark and stars had sent.

And tho’ warm-lidded lechery was sweet, I knew

    The discontent of higher dreams,

And how the red-lipped sweetness changed and staled and grew

A thing the dewy dancers feared to view.

O loveliest of all the wreathèd revellers,

    Break, break the cup, the wine forswear.

Courageous, thee and me a lordlier vintage stirs —

The blood of life’s unraptured warriors.

The wind has reverenced the splendor of the night.

    Westward upon the green and saffron light

Of dusk it passed, with vasty wings and voice not low,

    Fleeing with awe the splendor of the night.

Were I the wind to-night, the tangled stars and snow

    My aweless wings’ unfettered might would know.

O joy, the trancèd splendor of the air to shake

    And starward hurl like spray the errant snow!

Ah, for the tyranny of furious wings, to wake

    Superb, this ecstasy of calm; to slake

My passion-winnowed heart with tempests’ windy woe!

    I would to-night the storms were all awake!

    And so we part!

You with your vague, sweet smile,

I with a breaking heart;

You to your vague, sweet ways,

I where the failures start.

    We lingered long!

You for mere idleness,

I for your mouth like song;

You for the flattery,

I for your beauty strong.

    Our lips’ last touch!

Yours cold as mere consent,

Mine colder were there such.

And you will never know,

And I have known too much.

.   .   .   .

    Parting sublime!

Already you’ve forgot,

I will forget in time.

You sigh without regret,

And I have heart to rhyme.

Breath of the dawn, breath of the dawn,

Breathe on my heart of thine eagerness.

Up from the sea, youthful with thee,

                                                  Be drawn

For a spell and a healing to me

                                                  In my stress.